For my dissertation project I researched and developed a system for incorporating historically accurate stances for the German Longsword for use within virtual reality. The scope of the project expanded to form a framework that would allow for guarding stances for other weapons and combat styles to be used.
Various elements of the weapon needed to be calculated within the virtual reality game-space to determine the correct guard, these included determining the following; the plane in which the edge of the weapon is held, the direction of the weapon's point and the general position of the weapon relative to the player. With these variables it is possible to then determine whether the weapon is held in a valid stance.
Stance templates can be applied directly to a weapon object to list which stances are valid. An empty template was created that allows for iteration and creation of new stances and techniques.
